Chapter 3.

Autors Note:

This chapter is dedicated to Alinyalehtia who loves Puccini as much as I do. Best Wishes to everyone and thank you for reading and reviewing. I´m heartgald from the reception here.

"I don't like flowers — they do remind me often
Of funerals, of weddings and of balls;
Their presence on tables for a dinner calls.

But sub-eternal roses' ever simple charm
Which was my solace when I was a child,
Has stayed — my heritage — a set of years behind,
Like Mozart's ever-living music's hum".

Akhmatova, 1910.

So it was that in the year of 1904 in the verdant spring we traveled, Father and I into deep lushness of Italy. The sensual caressing warmth, and cultural richness was dizzying. The vendors shouting, selling their wares, the giggling children playing to and fro in the cobbled streets, that were murder on feet with slim heels. I walked aroud tasting with my senses the bustle that was Italian evening.

La Scala Opera, glowing with electric light, before me.

I was wearing an evening gown, a purple silk dress, and gloves of the same shade. My hair had been combed into a shallow braid that was up, crowned with pansies and irises. The box was gilded with cream, dark deep red of cherrywood benches, and rose-red plush four chairs lined up, a small table with refreshments, fruit, candied almonds, a silver vase full of white roses. I sat in front and suddenly noticed that the adjacent seats had been filled, I had not noticed the arrival of the two women. I had been so focused on admiring the stage and acoustics of La Scala.

Next us to sat a stout but slender blond woman who seemed to cause quite a stir in the rest of the audience. The whispers hardened, and some even pointed and muttered disapprovingly: "how she dares to come here. She should be on the left bank of Paris, with other artistic types."

I wondered a little amused who the blond woman was, she didn't look very much at all, though she didn't have a fashionable suit, but a shapeless light blond gauze that seemed home-woven. The woman's companion was more interesting, slender, pale and blonde, narrow frame, dressed in black, in trousers and a tailcoat, a violet at the buttonhole, and she wrote to a small notebook with ink pen, letters that did not look like french, italy, or russian, but I wasn't sure because I didn't want to seem too curious, and look too closely.

Before time the orchestra came to its place and the lights dimmed. The evening's performance was a premier of Puccini´s new work. It was named Madama Butterfly. The posters outside referred to an exotic locale, a stunning visual vista, that was in keeping with the japoniserie zeal that was still going around in Parisian middle and upper class drawing rooms.

The curtain rose. And I forgot just about everything, the fatigue, the starting headache from the smoke, the curiosity about the foreign women, the music it was. The music, libretto and performers, it all cut deep, it felt like I couldn't breathe propely. Pure, bright, Japanese-adapted melodies, but with a clear western nuance, the melodies rose, the voices of the performers rose, rose as the drama unfolded on stage.

As the strains of " Un bel di vedremo" melody( the one that did later become so famous in all Puccini´s ouvre) flooded the stage from the theater. The auditorium, was completely quiet, harmonious, unity that comes seldom between the performers and the audience. Colorful electric light, dark red plush benches, perfumes, cigars, floral arrangements, sweat it all disappeared from my consciousness. Suddenly I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be on stage, like Butterfly. Like the soprano Lotte Lehman, or the famous mezzo-soprano Pauline Guéymard-Lauters. I had received a voice as a birth gift. I didn't know if I was talented enough, but I wanted to try my luck. All I had to do is decide which conservatory I am going to apply to, and what my languages need to be improved, and if I can be admitted at all.

At the intermission. The obligatory social interactions of the evening I walked around in a fog, the long supressed ambition made me vague to the social dance around me. On the other hand, I never very well endured the social plotting and gossiping of brandy and champagne that is the norm on these occasions. Opera is both an artform and a place setting of a social fish tank where businessmen, courtesans, the bourgeoisie and the nobility mingle for a short time before returning to their own spheres, and its secret and semi-public scandals, that sell magazines and, depending on the worldnews, some speeches and controversies can be hashed out at the breakfast tables of different provinces. Though life is no longer as in Verdi's La Traviata, neither plot or moral norms, whereas, fortunately, social norms have progressed, but women are still seen as a valuable commodity.

Aterwards at the end of the opera rest of the audience seemed indignant, and a little disappointed, even. I do not know what they expected, the evening for me had been revolutionary Puccini was a genius. Puccini's melodies remained in my subconscious, I hummed the Butterfly´s leitmotif as I walked around lobby. The libretto, the exoticism of Japan, and the thoughtless cruelty of men is one consequence of femininity, the one snare that I wowed not to be caught.

Father didn't notice my pensiveness as usual, he was discussing work matters, with a gaggle of men in suits, with them smelling of cigar, expensive cognac and money. All the scents I hated because they represented something gloomy and foreign to me. I imagined that power smells of waxed mustache, vintage wine and like in the opera of Puccini Pinkerton does what he wants, so do all the upscale men in my class. The idea of tying your life to something disgusting and foreing full of stock quotes, and tea parties of different rota weekly and yearly, forever and ever.. Opera and music and my education offered me an escape from this world where I was caught like an insect in an amber.

I leaned against a pillar and sipped the champagne, watching the people flocking in the lobby. Suddenly I felt a light touch on my shoulder, and I could smell the violets.

Right in front of me stood a woman in that trouser suit, she turned her head diagonally and said in a low soothing voice:

"Dans tes yeux

les clartés trop brutales s'émoussent.

Ton front lisse, pareil à l'éclatant vélin,

Que l'écarlate et l'or de l'image éclaboussent,

Brûle de reflets roux ton regard opalin."

I smiled when I heard a pure alexandrin couplet pronounced in classical french with an hint of a accent, however, that quote was not familiar to me before and before I could say so to her, there was a moment of silence in another voice, albeit in english; said:

"If you are trying to get a new petit amie, for yourself, try to quote something other than yourself Renee chérie. Your poems are not yet so well known that everyone would know them, at least outside the left bank of Paris, the lobby of La Scala is as far away from home as possible."

It was the blond woman, from the box, she approached us with a smile and a graceful nod to me held out her hand with a card with the name Nathalie C. Barney written in graceful calligraphy, and the address on the left bank of Paris, 20 Rue de Jacob. I looked from the card, at the women who smiled at each other, warmly, ironically, and most of all equally. The connection between them was something I didn't even know existed, but I knew I wanted to be a part of it. Nathalie said to me in calm superior tone, that demanded listening and attentiveness.

" We are in Italy for a week still, so come to visit our hotel, the address is on the back of the card, or pop into my salon when you return to Paris. You are from Paris. Dresses like that are not made in Italy. It´s color, is like a pure bluish-black night, or a ripe plum, and those flowers are well suited, especially for your brightness and coloring."

The almost nonverbal link, between Nathalie, and Renee and I had only been a few minutes long, but I felt completely exhausted by it. I thanked Nathalie for the invitation nodding when I noticed the woman called Renee stiffening next to me, and she slipped away sleeve touching hem of my dress, with a whisper of lightness.

I turned my gaze again up to the lobby the interior sparkling with plaited goldwork and Greek theamed pillars, and noticed the Father walking fast to me the crowd dissolved in his way. His shiny shoes would hit the floor aggressively and he seemed almost to fly to me saying calmly, coldly:

" It's high time to leave, Lizzie, the opera is over a long time ago and further work can wait until tomorrow. There are too many miscellaneous congregation here and all kinds of artistic types that are unsuitable for your eyes and sensibilities and the wine flows too profusely now."

I turned and looked in the direction of Nathalie and Renee, but they alredy had dissolved out of the lobby. My father's sudden arrival had broken the magic, all that was left was the scent of violets and a subtle French whispered in my ear and the enchantment of Puccini.

AN.

The french poem is a fragment from Renee Vivien(1877-1909) and the other woman is Natalie , also an author and early sapphist-icon.

Now 1900s queer-history lesson is at end.